*CFP* “CREATIVITY & RISK: PRACTICES OF LEARNING TO LEAP INTO THE UNKNOWN”, SYMPOSIUM, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH WALES CARDIFF

Creativity & Risk: Practices Of Learning To Leap Into The Unknown

Friday 6th September 2019

School of Performance and Production, University of South Wales Cardiff

Keynote speaker John Giwa-Amu runs production company Red and Black Films. The company’s first feature, Little White Lies, won two BAFTA Cymru Awards & was BIFA nominated. The Machine, selected from over 6,000 films, premiered in Tribeca and won three BAFTAs Cymru. The Party, directed by Sally Potter starring Cillian Murphy won the Guild Prize at Berlin 2017, a BIFA and grossed $3.5m theatrically. John has won the BBC Talent Award, is a Breakthrough Brit honouree, named a Future Leader by Screen International & graduated from Inside Pictures.

“Encouraging creativerisk-taking among tertiary learners is evidently a complex pursuit. There is a clear need for educators to feel comfortable in allowing their students space and autonomy to take risks”.  Dr. Phoebe Hart (2017)

This symposium critically examines the ways in which film and media production courses build appetite for risk-taking in their students' creative practice, from ideation development to audio-visual realisation and though to post-production. Encouraging students to take risks can be especially challengingwhen students feel pressured to prioritise the development of their perceived employability. Witha risk-averse attitude of a generation of students whose exposure to opportunities for creative exploration has become increasingly limited, many students arrive at university with little awareness of how applicable speculative play can be.

Research by the likes of P. Paulus (2000), S.Yuhyung, E.Chanyoung (2014)

suggests students tend to be more open to risk-taking challenges in groups than individually. So, what teaching strategies might we encourage that can exploit this understanding? Might gender have a bearing on how mixed groups of creative producers embrace risk-taking? In the multicultural setting of higher education, risk can mean different things to different students, so what flexible models of provocation can be designed to accommodate diverse interpretations of risk-taking? In what ways might risk-taking in one’s own creative research inform innovative pedagogy and vice versa?

Themes for presentations may include:

•  Teaching creative risk
•  Application of research to experimental curriculum development
•  Experimentation and ethics
•  Media audiences
•  Creative risk and media industries

The symposium will enquire into how practitioner/educators working across a range of platforms, including broadcast, cinema, gallery and on-line presentation, in documentary and fiction filmmaking, digital performance, set-design, animation embed risk in practice.

We welcome different approaches to research on risk-taking includingeducation theory, film history, psychology and sociology, experimental film practice, philosophy -- aesthetics and ethics.

We invite proposals for contributions to this symposium in the form of practical workshops, paper presentations, performances, screenings or oral papers that address the symposium theme from either theoretical or empirical perspectives.

Registration fee £25 covers tea/coffee, lunch and wine reception.

We also have travel bursaries to facilitate postgraduate and non-affiliated artists/researchers attending the event, so please note on your proposal if you would like to be considered for a travel bursary.

Call deadline: June 24th 

Please send proposals (300 words approx.) outlining the aim and form of presentation, along with a short biography to the symposium conveners: Inga Burrows (Inga.Burrows@southwales.ac.uk)  and Deirdre Russell (Deirdre.russell@southwales.ac.uk)